Herman Melville's Moby Dick is brought to life by the Lookingglass Theatre ensemble, and it is directed and adapted by David Catlin. It tells the story of the crew aboard the ship Pequod searching for the legendary white whale. This four time Jeff Award-winning play has become a favorite among critics and audiences of all ages.
Micah Figueroa was in the original production of Moby Dick at the Lookingglass in 2015. At that time, he did the national tour of the show and is in the current version playing Cabaco, a captain of the New Bedford ship.
Other Figueroa credits include The Winter Pageant at Redmoon Theater, and Lookingglass Alice.
He has brought theater into classrooms by teaching, currently for the Chicago Children's Theatre. He has taught at Lookingglass, Lifeline Theatre, The Actors Gymnasium and Raven Theatre in the past.
Windy City Times: Where are you from?
Micah Figueroa: A town just outside of Dallas, called Sachse, in Texas; I studied theater at Southern Methodist University.
WCT: Was it religious?
MF: The arts section was not. We were not required to go to church.
WCT: You have a lot of Shakespeare on your resume. Is that your forte?
MF: In a sense. It became my forte, because I was really good at stage combat. There are lots of roles for that. Most of my Shakespeare work was in warrior roles. I am getting back into that now. I took a break from acting right after I moved here. Shakespeare is my love!
WCT: Why did you move to Chicago?
MF: For the theater scene. I had studied abroad in England. I met people there that started a small theater company. I was invited to come join them in Chicago. It has since folded.
WCT: How did the acrobatic stunts come about?
MF: All by accident. I had played sports as a kid. In college I had a professor that trained me in stage combat. He thought I could do acrobat stunts, too.
WCT: Speaking of accidents, how did you fall during Moby Dick in the past?
MF: It was midway through the first run in 2015. It was during one of the first routines we do when we launched the ship. I got ahead of the choreography just a little bit. I tried to make up for it and launched myself too high on the pole. One of my hands hit the support beam, which knocked me off. I fell and broke my tibial plateau. I was out of the show.
I call it my lucky break in a sense. Usually something like this requires surgery, but it didn't. I had to keep mobile, so no cast. I walked on crutches and healed quickly.
WCT: How are you not traumatized from the fall?
MF: I had to really process that. It was very difficult. I was out of the closet by that time to most of my friends.
I had to question, "What am I in this for? Is there longevity to it?"
It included a lot of personal things, such as coming out to my family.
WCT: Why did you feel you needed to come out as bisexual to your family?
MF: One of the cool things about being bi is it is a gray area. When you have no models growing up, you stay in the gray for so long. I liked women, but also guys. It made me question my rationality and instincts.
That made me want to come back artistically too. I felt if I couldn't be myself every day day in real life, then I had no chance onstage trying to live somebody else's life.
WCT: Why do you feel the bisexual community is not more visible out in the world?
MF: I think people are really uncomfortable with it for a lot of reasons. I don't feel everyone is bi, but I feel there is an incredible amount of people with bisexual tendencies.
Because it is in that gray, middle area, since everything else is built around heteronormative behaviors, I feel many people take the easy road, even though they are still torn.
It questions monogamy, too. If my partner knows I am attracted to another gender as well, they don't get to have that same assumption that all of your other attractions disappear now that we are together. There is a security blanket, especially in marriage. With bisexual people, you know that is not always the case.
WCT: There is an assumption that people are unfaithful because they are bisexual.
MF: Exactly.
WCT: Or that being bisexual is just a stepping stone to being gay…
MF: That is a lot of the negative feedback I got from queer men. People say they are confused if you are bisexual. In reality, I was confused because there was zero groundwork. I am not confused anymore. I am opening the book for the first time and reading it. Unfortunately, other people are confused about me. I am happy to talk to them about it.
That is another reason I came out. I wanted to lay that groundwork as a role model for kids. It would have helped me a lot.
WCT: I noticed there is a bed-buddy scene in Moby Dick.
MF: There is a lot more in the book. Herman Melville was bi—well, it is pretty well-documented, but still rumored, that he was bi.
He had a version written that was not Moby Dick yet. There was a real boat called Essex that was sunk by a whale, just not a white whale.
He met Nathaniel Hawthorne and there is some research we did to find out that they were partners for a little bit. It was Hawthorne's influence that helped Melville make it about Moby Dick and getting the white whale.
In the whaling culture, it was a place for gay men to go. You are out in the ocean for three years with a bunch of guys.
There is a section in the book where they killed a whale and are processing it. They put all the sperm in a big vat. It gets clumpy and they have to break it up with their hands.
WCT: Oh, no!
MF: Oh, yes—it is all there. It is called "squeeze of the hand." Melville describes that when they a breaking up the sperm, that they sometimes accidentally look into each other's eyes. They talk about the smell. It is all in there.
There is also a lot of homophobic things in there too, because of the time. They say something like, "No one likes to share his bed, even if it is with his own brother."
For the scene you mentioned you have to understand is that it is an uncomfortable situation for those guys. That contradiction is in the book. There is homophobia and homoeroticism throughout.
WCT: How hard is it for you to hold that pose in the show in the air?
MF: It gets easier and is all about technique. I couldn't hold it for much longer than I do. Sometimes the actor that plays Ishmael will stretch it out just to mess with me!
Moby Dick runs through Sunday, Sept. 3, at Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave. Visit LookingGlassTheatre.org for tickets and more information .
